Xsolla Blog

With the rise in popularity of F2P models within the gaming industry, the active use of discounts for sales of digital in-game goods has never been more important for the well-being and success of the developer/game. Sales within the digital gaming sphere allow the developer/publisher to stimulate demand, increase conversions and ultimately generate profit.

According to recent research done by the Corum Group in 2014, it was found that out of the top 10 deals in the gaming industry, 9 of those involved Asian acquirers.

Image Credit: Corum Group

This trend held strong as last year there were 8 Asian firms involved out of the top 10 acquisitions within the online gaming industry. This may have been because the casual gamer is on the rise as mobile games become more widespread especially within Asia. In 2013, the value of all deals relating to games rose by 29% up to $5.6 billion total.

At Xsolla, we offer many services to the Gaming community, from Payment services to account management to advanced analytics. We are proud to count world-class customers providing some of the largest available MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games such as Steam (Valve), World of Tanks, and Game of Thrones (BigPoint).

One of things that makes the F2P consumer base unique is that each consumer invests different amount of money into the game. In F2P games, players invest as much money as they seem fit: Therefore, some consumers may invest a lot of money into a game while other may invest nothing. Most developers welcome this, but regardless they would obviously prefer if all consumers invested into their game. Xsolla takes a look at the difference between paying and non paying players, and how developers can strike a balance between these two.

Players - Who Are They?

Before focusing on having a high amount of paying players developers need to simply focus on obtaining an audience.This information is hard to come by because each developer has a different opinion over what an “active” user is. Most studies however focus on two groups that represent a video game’s audience. These groups are called Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU). MAUs are consider to be the best way to understand how big your user base is. DAUs are also important, but they are best used to figure out how a game could possibly change in order to increase your MAUs.